In this newsletter:
* Latest news
* Browse with Plus
* Mathematical moments
* Live maths
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Latest news
Network news
Why rich and famous people get richer and more famous
http://www.plus.maths.org/latestnews/jan-apr07/networks/index.html
Polygons in space
We may not have found life out there, but there's a hexagon on Saturn
http://www.plus.maths.org/latestnews/jan-apr07/hexagon/index.html
The Abel Prize 2007
This year's prize is awarded for the maths of freak events
http://www.plus.maths.org/latestnews/jan-apr07/abel07/index.html
Solving symmetry
Mathematicians tame one of the wildest beasts of maths
http://www.plus.maths.org/latestnews/jan-apr07/liegroups/index.html
Stringent tests
Scientists develop ways of testing string theory
http://www.plus.maths.org/latestnews/jan-apr07/strings/index.html
Plus ... more news from the world of maths in the Plus blog
Happy birthday, Leonhard Euler
Paul Cohen dies
Students are falling in love with maths again
http://plus.maths.org/blog/
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Browse with Plus
Get your maths problems sorted with askNRICH!
This web-board is monitored by a team of mathematicians who are ready to
answer any maths questions you might have, whether it's about calculating
the value of pi or the consistency of formal set theory. Topics covered
range from basic school maths to tricky university level maths. You can
join in existing discussions or start a new conversation of your own, as
well as browse the vast archive of previous threads. Admittedly, Plus has a
vested interest here: askNRICH is part of Plus's sister site NRICH. But we
wouldn't like to withhold good things from our readers!
askNRICH: https://nrich.maths.org/cgi-bin/discus/discus.cgi?pg=topics
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Mathematical moments
Leonhard Euler - Born: 15th of April 1707 in Basel, Switzerland
Died: 18th of September 1783 in St Petersburg, Russia
Leonhard Euler would have turned 300 yesterday! Euler was the most prolific
mathematician of all time. He wrote more than 500 books and papers during
his lifetime - about 800 pages per year - with an incredible 400 further
publications appearing posthumously. His collected works and correspondence
are still not completely published: they already fill over seventy large
volumes, comprising tens of thousands of pages.
Euler worked in an astonishing variety of areas, ranging from the very pure
- the theory of numbers, the geometry of a circle and musical harmony - via
such areas as infinite series, logarithms, the calculus and mechanics, to
the practical - optics, astronomy, the motion of the Moon, the sailing of
ships, and much else besides. Indeed, Euler originated so many ideas that
his successors have been kept busy trying to follow them up ever since. Not
surprisingly, many concepts are named after him: Euler's constant, Euler's
polyhedron formula, the Euler line of a triangle, Euler's equations of
motion, Eulerian graphs, Euler's pentagonal formula for partitions, and
many others.
Euler's career took him from his native Basel to the Academy at St
Petersburg, where he eventually became Professor of Mathematics, to the
Berlin Academy, on invitation from Prussia's Frederick the Great, and
finally back to St Petersburg. He fathered thirteen children, of whom only
five survived to adolescence, and reportedly carried out mathematical
researches with a baby on his lap.
Euler died in St Petersburg on the 18th of September 1783. In a eulogy by
the Marquis de Condorcet, we read about his final afternoon:
"After amusing himself with calculating on a slate the laws of the
ascending motion of air balloons, the recent discovery of which was then
making a noise all over Europe, he dined with Mr Lexell and his family,
talked of Herschel's planet (Uranus), and of the calculations which
determine its orbit. A little after, he called his grandchild, and fell a
playing with him as he drank tea, when suddenly the pipe, which he held in
his hand, dropped from it, and he ceased to calculate and to breathe."
Plus will run a series of articles on Euler throughout this year, starting
off in this issue with Robin Wilson's "Read Euler, read Euler, he is the
master of us all" -
http://plus.maths.org/issue42/features/wilson/index.html. This Mathematical
Moments item was paraphrased from Wilson's article. You can also find out
more about aspects of Euler's work in the following articles:
An infinite series of surprises
http://plus.maths.org/issue19/features/infseries/index.html
Maths aMazes
http://plus.maths.org/issue14/features/budd/index.html
Lagrange and the interplanetary superhighway
http://plus.maths.org/issue36/features/dartnell/index.html
101 uses of a quadratic equation
http://plus.maths.org/issue30/features/quadratic/index-gifd.html
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Live maths
Euler - 300th anniversary lecture
Professor Robin Wilson will explore Euler's life and work in this free
public lecture organised by Gresham College.
When: 9th of May 2007 at 1 pm and at 6pm
Where: Gresham College, Barnard’s Inn Hall, Holborn, London EC1N 2HH
Tickets: free, no booking required
More information: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/event.asp?PageId=45&EventId=518
Tales of maths and science
Johnny Ball has spent much of his career communicating ideas in science and
maths. In his talk, Johnny will discuss tales of heroic scientific
characters he has featured over the years and how he makes their
achievements still relevant to present day students and situations. He'll
then round off with some personal views of how we might ensure we send the
right messages to encourage ever more bright young minds towards careers in
maths and science.
When: 1st of May 2007 at 6.30 pm
Where: The Royal Society, 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AG
Tickets: free, no booking required
More information: http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/
Multiplying and dividing whole numbers
In this free public lecture Professor Timothy Gowers FRS explains why
simple mulitplication and division is more difficult than you might think.
When: 22nd of May 2007 at 6pm
Where: Gresham College, Barnard’s Inn Hall, Holborn, London EC1N 2HH
Tickets: free, no booking required
More information: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/event.asp?PageId=45&EventId=607
Happy reading from the Plus team!
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